Recently I bought a 512 MB Lexar Jump Drive, and I have tried several times to get this working on my Windows 98 computer. I have downloaded and installed the device drivers for the drive, and after about 45 minutes I was able to get the Jump Drive. However, after restarting the computer it would no longer recognise the Jump Drive when connected to the computer. So, every time I restart the computer I must go into the Device Manager to get the Jump Drive to work. How can I get the device to work normally without having to go through this procedure? (more…)

Until a few weeks ago my computer had about 45% free space, as indicated by the Disk Defragmenter utility. However, the disk has suddenly become full. We haven’t downloaded any large files except Windows XP Service Pack 2, which was 250MB. Looking in ‘Add/Remove Programs’ shows only two large items, which were games occupying about 1 GB each. Something which may have caused the problem was my son loaded a security program from a magazine cover CD. When this program was loaded the antivirus software on the computer would be stuck on scanning this program. Since deleting the security software the antivirus scan sticks at the ‘Disc Cleanup’ stage. How can I solve the antivirus problem, and the issue of my hard drive filling with data? The computer is running Windows XP with a 20 GB hard drive. (more…)

When attempting to run Norton Speed Disk in normal mode the computer freezes, and uninstalling Norton SystemWorks does not help fix the problem. I discovered there was a virus in Vet quarantine, which I subsequently deleted. Subsequently I uninstalled Vet, then downloaded and installed the latest version and was able to run a Vet scan in safe mode where no virus was detected. Vet support suggested the reason for Speed Disk freezing is my hard disk may have faults and is starting to fail. Running ScanDisk on the hard drive through Safe Mode showed no faults, and Defragmenter also completed in Safe Mode without detecting any bad clusters. Can you suggest any other way of testing the hard disk? I am beginning to think I will have to reformat the hard disk and reinstall Windows. This raises the question whether I should upgrade to a more recent operating system. If so, which operating system do you recommend? In the course of all this activity I discovered a large number of Norton protected files in the Recycle Bin, most of which I have no idea what they do. Should I empty the bin? The computer is running Windows 98. (more…)

A message continually appears saying the drive ‘presario.rp (D:)’ is running low on disk space. However, the Disk Cleanup wizard scans the C: drive, rather than the D: drive. Another message follows shortly after advising the drive only has 6 MB of free disk space. System Restore has been suspended as there isn’t enough disk space available. The computer is running Windows XP Professional on an AMD Athlon XP2400+ running at 1.99GHz with 256 MB RAM. It seems the computer is defaulting to the D: drive, rather than the C: drive. Can you shed any light on why this occurs? (more…)

My Shintaro 256MB USB thumb drive is not always recognised after being plugged-into a Windows XP or 2000 machine. The problem may persist even after unplugging and reinserting the device. (more…)